The rollout of Windows Phone 7.5, codename “Mango”, began today. Over the next month, all owners of Windows Phone 7 devices should receive the upgrade to Mango, which brings a ton of new consumer-facing functionality. It also brings a healthy amount of new developer capabilities, including background agents, multiple live tiles, and more.
All apps compiled for Mango support the new “fast switching” capability, which suspends the app instead of immediately tombstoning it when the user only leaves the app temporarily (e.g., for a phone call or to check email).
To take advantage of fast switching, we’re trying to push out a quick update (1.3) for Mango users of the WordPress for Windows Phone app. We also added two new features: per-blog live tiles and picture hub integration.
In the current release, when you launch the app you choose which blog you want to manage. For the 1.3 release, there will be a new “pin” button in the appbar on the blog panorama that will let you pin that blog directly to your start screen. This lets you easily jump into your favorite blog(s) right away. In a future update we hope to add new comment counts and other information to the live tiles to make them even more useful.
One of the common use-cases for on-the-go blogging is uploading photos taken with your smartphone. The 1.3 release will now include integration with the Photo hub’s “Share” functionality. When you take a photo, click the “…” menu and choose “share.” Your email and social networking accounts will show in the list, and now WordPress will too. When you choose to share with WordPress, the app will launch, you can select the appropriate blog, and you’ll be taken right into the “New Post” page with the photo already attached and waiting for you to write your post.
I hope the app will be submitted for certification soon, and we’ll have a post on the official blog when it becomes available in the marketplace.